15 Ways to Practice Positive Self-Talk for Success
You talk to yourself all the time, either mentally or out loud. These messages give you direction and are opinions about yourself, good or bad. They will either motivate and encourage you, or they’ll tear you down and discourage you. Here are 15 valuable tips to help you keep your self-talk upbeat and constructive.

6 Benefits of Being More Focused
In today’s technological world, it’s hard to stay focused. There is so much that pulls at your attention. But staying focused is imperative if you want to achieve your goals. And it is a skill that you can develop and sustain. Learn the benefits you’ll experience when you commit to and practice this ability.

This Is The Difference Between An Anxiety Attack And A Panic Attack
Many people experience a free-floating type of anxiety that can be triggered into high alert by just turning on the news. Other times, anxious feelings can surface with no seeming provocation. They both can feel intense, but they are separate and distinct experiences. Here’s how to tell the difference plus expert tips on how to manage each of them.

Ask The ExpertComments Off on Should I uncover blocks before writing goals?

Jun202018

Question: Should I uncover the hidden beliefs that are blocking me before I write my affirmations about my goals?

Answer: It’s not necessary to uncover the conflicts or hidden beliefs before moving forward. Many times, all that is needed is the conscious mind’s focus and commitment to the goal to convince the subconscious to let go of its old beliefs.

However, if, no matter what you do consciously, the subconscious still sabotages you, you can actually create an affirmation stating the “hidden beliefs are now revealed.” Affirmations declaring that you now have clarity, that the old beliefs are now made apparent to the conscious mind, that you now know what has been creating the resistance, or statements that address your situation will start cleaning the window of your mind so you can see what’s going on.

Sometimes the belief is something that you’ve known just below conscious awareness, or it’s something that you’ve taken for granted. But you may be surprised what pops into your awareness concerning the hidden belief. Then you can write an affirmation to deal with that specific belief.

Did you know that, according to a survey, about 80% of small businesses don’t keep track of their business goals or vision? They jump into action, without knowing where their direction. And that takes them nowhere. Before you have a plan, there are two other areas to address. In this video, not only do you discover what they are, you’ll learn about a complimentary teleseminar that will take you further.

The complimentary teleseminar, “Stop Spinning Your Wheels: Essential Secrets to Supercharge Your Business,” will be Thursday, May 10th at 6:30pm Arizona (6:30pm PDT, 7:30pm MDT, 8:30pm CDT, 9:30pm EDT). I invite you to visit Stop Spinning Your Wheels to learn more and to register. If you register, but cannot attend live, there will be a replay available for a few days.

Becky lived in an apartment with a couple of roommates, and she wanted a space of her own. Faced with all the options available to her, she kept saying, “I’m so confused.” She was afraid she was going to make the wrong decision, get trapped somewhere she didn’t want to be, or miss out on something better. The confusion left her paralyzed. So she didn’t choose anything different and even when her roommates changed, she stayed where she was.

Clarity is vitally important for you to know what you want. Once you are clear on your goal, you can focus on it and move in that direction. Clarity is necessary for you to have success in any area of your life. If you don’t know what you want, you’ll just drift along and receive the results of the average of your thoughts.

Without clarity, you’re in a perpetual state of confusion. This causes insecurity and stress, which simply creates more turmoil. You run around in circles and don’t get anywhere. You might look at one option after another, and all the possibilities you face produces more chaos for you.

But the only person who is generating your confusion is you. By affirming that you’re in this state, refusing to commit to a path, or allowing yourself to get overwhelmed by choices, you’re contributing to the challenge. You’re giving your subconscious mind the message to keep you scattered. The underlying issue may be that you’re trying to avoid responsibility, afraid you’ll make a mistake, get stuck in a situation, or fail.

Believe it or not, uncertainty is a choice. It’s a decision not to decide. Once you whittle down your choices, and choose a direction, it clears away the mental fog. It may become evident that you don’t want to go that route. That’s fine. You can stay open to other possibilities and change your mind. But don’t change it too much, or you’ll find yourself back in the mists that clouded your mind in the first place.

When you pick a track and determine to continue on it, the haze clears away, and you can see a little way ahead. Take one step, then another. At this point, you don’t need to know where you’re going to end up. It’s enough that you’ve chosen to move in a direction. Because when you’re moving, the Universe can guide you.

Initially, any direction is better than being stalled. So even if you’re not certain about what you want, choose a path. As you’re moving, you’ll discover what you want and don’t want. Write down your goals or intentions. This prompts you to be more specific in what you desire. Then read them every day. Ask yourself, “What can I do today that will move me in their direction?”

Once you’ve made a decision, don’t second guess yourself. If new information comes your way, or circumstances change, then you can reevaluate your choice. But don’t be distracted by a shiny, new idea or opportunity that leads you in a different direction without some reason. The diversion is a mirage and simply an old habit trying to prevent change. If you become uncomfortable, it’s just the old habit of confusion trying to lure you back into its lair. Stay on track, and confusion will fade away.

As you build your commitment to your decisions, you’ll gain confidence that you can make wise ones. The Universe and your inner self will guide you to make ones that take you on your optimal path. Trust yourself, because you do have the knowledge within to make the right choices for your greatest good.

Affirmation:
I am always being guided and directed by the One Life within me. I pick a direction, make a choice and take a step. As I move forward, the next step is made clear to me. My path is made smooth and straight. Each day, I take action to propel myself towards a greater good.

As a vision strategist, hypnotherapist, and speaker, Linda-Ann Stewart helps women entrepreneurs and small business owners who feel stuck, immobilized and overwhelmed to to get clear, focused and on the fast track to the next level of their business. If you'd like some help to reach your goals, apply for her complimentary "Clarify Your Vision" consultation at http://www.Linda-AnnStewart.com/coaching.shtml

In today’s fast paced world, we experience more stress than ever. A lot of it comes from our feeling like we have no control. When we feel like we have more control, stress and its impact reduces. Wouldn’t you like to be able to channel all that energy into something more productive? Learn 6 simple ways to take control of stress so that you have more clarity and are healthier.

Transcript:

Got stress? We all have it, some more than others. It happens as a result of everything from running late one day to having 3 projects due at once. A lot of our chronic stress is due to feeling out of control or not having any control over conditions. So I wanted to share some ways you can get some control over the stress that I’ll bet you’re experiencing.

I’m Linda-Ann Stewart, a vision strategist. For almost 30 years, I’ve been a hypnotherapist and coach. One of my specialties was to help people deal with stress. We identified the causes and reframed their attitudes about them, as well as giving them other strategies to reduce the stress.
Now, as a vision strategist, I help women entrepreneurs get a clear vision, get focused on its strategies and get back in control so they’re able to accelerate to the next level of their business.
It helps them handle their stress so they can be more successful

You know how, when you’re stressed and can’t get a handle on it, you tend to get overwhelmed easily? You flip into reactive mode. It’s like you have a hammer and everything is a nail. Right? But you hammer things that aren’t nails, and that can be counterproductive. Instead, you need to grab some control so you can deal with things more rationally. Feeling like you have some control also allows you to channel that energy into something productive. Isn’t this what you want?

I want to share 6 easy ways that you can start to manage your stress and get back in control. Are you ready?

1. 1 thing. Take 1 thing you can control and handle that. Handle your email, / turn off your phone notifications so you can get some work done it quiet, / say NO to a request that you know will send you over the edge. I did this last one just recently. Handling 1 thing gives you a center to work from. What 1 thing would that be for you?

2. Daily routine. Instability and never knowing what’s next contributes to stress. Creating security through a daily routine can give you some breathing room. It gives you a sense of organization and control over your time. It’s especially good to have one it the morning, as it sets the mood for your day. Do you have a daily routine?

3. Self-hypnosis / relaxation training. This is one of the things I helped people with in my practice. I led them through some relaxation, and taught them self-hypnosis. I had a client who’d used massage, yoga, and other types of stress management techniques tell me that what we did was the most beneficial of all of them. This helps reset your body and mind, building resiliency. Doesn’t it feel good to relax?

4. Reframe. When you’re anxious or worried, you go into the fight or flight mode and you get paralyzed. Shuts down your thinking processes. But if you’re able to reframe the feeling to excitement or challenge, you’re able to come up with possibilities and be more innovative. Even using different words, such as “hassle” or “pressure,” can reframe the stress. How could you reframe things that stress you?

5. Help others. This one sounds counter intuitive. When you help others, you’re giving your precious resources of time and energy. But studies find that people under stress who helped others didn’t experience the damaging effects of stress. They also felt more satisfied in their lives. Don’t you feel good when you’ve helped someone?

6. Practice meditation or mindfulness, both of which helps the skill of concentration. Yes, concentration, attention and focus are skills. In today’s frenetic world, they’ve gotten rusty. Meditation / mindfulness train you to be more focused. They also keep your mind from spiraling out of control and keeps your attention on what you can handle. It also helps you to let go of what you can’t control. What can you do to build the skill of focus?

Don’t try to do all of these at once. That would throw you back into being overwhelmed and stressed. Take one of them and practice it. Which one would you want to start with? Practice and see if you feel better. Then add another one. The whole idea is for you to take more control. And once shift your attitude towards stress from it being a buggy bear to it being manageable, you’ll have more clarity and be healthier.

As a vision strategist, hypnotherapist, and speaker, Linda-Ann Stewart helps women entrepreneurs and small business owners who feel stuck, immobilized and overwhelmed to to get clear, focused and on the fast track to the next level of their business. If you'd like some help to reach your goals, apply for her complimentary "Clarify Your Vision" consultation at http://www.Linda-AnnStewart.com/coaching.shtml

12 Habits of Genuine People
Genuine people know who they are. They are confident enough to be comfortable in their own skin. People who are genuine walk their talk and inspire trust. These 12 characteristics can help you determine whether someone is actually genuine and authentic.

Why We Should Be Having More Meaningful Conversations
Introverts hate small talk. They prefer to dive into deep conversations. Research is now verifying that deep discussions are good for you, making you happier. If you have trouble having meaningful discussions, this article gives you some direction on how to initiate them.

Why Keeping a Daily Journal Could Change Your Life
Journaling gives you powerful access to your creativity and being able to find solutions. Research shows that it can improve your health and well being. This article focuses on how to use it to organize and streamline your day for maximum efficiency. But the writer also goes into many of the other benefits that keeping a journal brings.

Self-sabotage is designed to keep you in your comfort zone. It ensures that you unconsciously undermine yourself to maintain the status quo. But you don’t have to be held hostage to it. You have the ability to overcome it. Learn what it takes to eliminate self-sabotage.

Do you have a dream or a vision that you’re not actively pursuing? Maybe you’re not taking action on it or you’re chronically preparing to start. If so, you’re not alone. Self-sabotage is an insidious, subversive and subtle act. It gets hidden amongst the busyness of your life. And it may even seem completely reasonable that you haven’t been able to make any progress toward your dream. But there are unseen forces at work within you that are holding you back.

Here are 7 ways that you undermine yourself and steps you can take to overcome these obstacles.

1. Lack of clarity. You only have a fuzzy idea of what you want. This isn’t very motivating and it won’t impel you to take action. When you don’t have a precise idea of your direction, you won’t take any steps. Specific ideas about your goals allow you to take specific steps towards achieving them, which leads to better results. It also gives the Law of Attraction an explicit pattern to follow.

2. No plan. You may want to go with the flow and resist the structure of a plan. But when you choose to let things unfold in this way, you’re going to be blown around by every circumstance that presents itself. There’s a saying, “When you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” In your busy life, if something doesn’t get prioritized, it doesn’t get done. Create an outline of a plan that serves you, so that the Law of Attraction can draw to you what you need. Your plan should include room for the unexpected.

3. Not working your plan. You’ve created a plan, put it in a drawer and gotten involved in your busy life. The immediate and the urgent have taken precedence. Or you may be dealing with the “shiny object syndrome.” Other enticing options have taken you off track and gotten you nowhere. This just creates confusion for the Universe, as it doesn’t know what you want. It’s ok to make course corrections periodically, but not every day. Assess your plan and get back to working it.

4. Not making your dream a priority. You have a plan, but you let other things get in the way. This may be day-to-day chores or plain old inertia. It’s simply easier to fall back into old habits than it is to clear space to work for your dream. Unless you decide that your dream is important, you’ll never achieve it. And the Universe won’t make it a priority, either. Focus on what you want, schedule taking action and following through.

5. Seeking approval. You’re trying to live up to other peoples’ expectations of you. And you put others’ agendas ahead of your own wants, needs and desires. For the most part, you don’t need their approval nor to meet their expectations. What you want is as important as what they do. Learn to say, “No,” when their expectations conflict with what you want. The Universe approves of you when you do.

6. Perfectionism. You won’t move forward until everything is perfect. This is an unrealistic and unreachable goal. Perfectionism comes from fear that you’ll make a mistake. Of course, you’re going to make mistakes. That’s how you learn and make course corrections. The Universe doesn’t expect your efforts to be flawless. Repeat to yourself, “Progress, not perfection.” As long as you have a vision and the beginnings of a plan, you can make some headway. You can build the rest as you go along.
7. Procrastination. This behavior is the worst of the offenders. It probably sinks more dreams than anything else. Either you put off starting or you put off uncomfortable or unfamiliar tasks that are necessary to your vision. Out of fear or rebellion, you chronically avoid making a decision or taking an action until the last minute. The Law of Attraction follows your lead and delays any good coming your way. Take some action, no matter how small and build momentum. One small step at a time is all you need to do to make progress.

Self-sabotage is an attempt to keep you safely confined in your comfort zone, so you don’t have to stretch or be anxious. Your subconscious is trying to protect you from the disappointment or rejection that you experienced when you were younger. Unfortunately, this strategy doesn’t support your dream or who you are now.

When you recognize that you’re sabotaging yourself, and that it’s a function of some outdated attempt at self-preservation, you can make changes. It will be uncomfortable at first, as all change is. And you’ll be tempted to step back into old patterns. But you have the power, wisdom and understanding to take charge and shift your world. Open the door to your dreams and step through.

Affirmation:
I realize the self-sabotage is an outdated attempt to keep me safe in a world that no longer exists. I now recognize any ways in which I undermine myself. It’s powerful to bring them out into the light so that I can see they are no longer needed. I now let go of what no longer serves me, and now establish new thoughts, beliefs and behaviors that support my dreams.

As a vision strategist, hypnotherapist, and speaker, Linda-Ann Stewart helps women entrepreneurs and small business owners who feel stuck, immobilized and overwhelmed to to get clear, focused and on the fast track to the next level of their business. If you'd like some help to reach your goals, apply for her complimentary "Clarify Your Vision" consultation at http://www.Linda-AnnStewart.com/coaching.shtml

When you have a vision or intention, it’s hard to stay on track. Yet, you’re the only one who can bring it into reality. To do so, you have to keep your attention on it, have the right mindset and take action. But it’s so easy to sabotage yourself. Here are 5 ways that could undermine what you want and what to do about them.